St Mary in Jerusalem
by Windswift
Summary: Prussia's six centuries old and he finds himself back where he started, carrying out the vows of the German Order.


Disclaimer: _Axis Powers Hetalia_ belongs to Himaruya Hidekaz

_**St. Mary in Jerusalem**_

Prussia feels it, for a moment, standing in the field-a prickling, a tingling crawling up his spine to the back of his neck, a chill that raises his hair in goosebumps, a flush that sweeps across his skin and into his ears. He shudders and shakes it off once the moment passes. He's not sure what compelled him to go walking into the countryside and stand around thinking superstitious thoughts. But in that moment, he felt, someone was calling him, and he was drawn to it.

Whatever it was, it's stupid and silly and Prussia laughs it away, long and loud, with his head tossed back-and it cuts off into a yelp and a bite of his tongue five steps later when his footing slips and he slides down into a ditch concealed by the tall grasses.

And that's how Prussia meets the boy, at the bottom of the ditch, with his whole body jolted and his heart racing from it and the taste of blood in his mouth.

Prussia, plunked on his ass and thoroughly rattled, sits up and stretches his legs in front of him. The pliable grass rustles and bends out of his way like sheaves of fine, smooth hair-although that should be gold, not green, like in a story. He swallows, grimaces, and spits on the ground, just missing the boots of the boy he only notices now that Prussia's turned his head. He's curled up, with the long stems of the grass flattened beneath him and looking like a nesting fawn, but the greenery arches tall enough to cover him from a distance.

At first, Prussia fully intends to walk away and leave him there-he's the fucking Kingdom of Prussia, after all, and it's his business to be awesome and kick ass, not carry home every stray animal that crosses his path (although more often than not, he does that as well). He pushes himself to his feet and turns to scramble out of the shallow ravine-he can brace one foot on the level ground, but the angle is too sharp and awkward for Prussia to actually haul himself up with just one step-when a fit of coughing racks the boy. Prussia has levered himself halfway up when the boy cries in slurred German, "It hurts."

And something inside Prussia slips.

Above the horizon of the grass a flat grey cloud-cover blankets the sky, and all Prussia can see is the pale sails of the ship no longer snapping and billowing in the sea breeze. His breath chokes in his throat at the memory of hot, stuffy air; they've never left the ship, not really, because they tore it apart and fashioned a tent, and the stench and illness and stagnant air fills it as terribly as sitting trapped below deck. But despite that the Crusaders smile at the would-be hospitallers, they utter words like _thank you_ and _brothers_ and _countrymen_ in German, and the unchristened Teutonic Order knows that at least his tongue offers some comfort before his hands confidently learn to heal.

Prussia finds himself sliding down to the bottom of the ditch again, pitched forward onto his knees after his boots lose their traction, and in a corner of his mind he's glad he's worn plain clothes for this excursion. Prussia's hands are touching the boy's face, patting down his body with practiced efficiency to check for broken bones before he tries to shift him. "I'm here now," he says. "I've finally arrived."

* * *

Prussia opens the stove and stokes the fire again, watching the sparks fly and the flicker and dance of the flames. It's actually burning quite well without his frequent interference, so all his impatience manages to do is let a wash of hot air out into the kitchen, flushing his face and raising the hair on his bared forearms. He shuts the door, straightens up, and glares into the pot of water with its smooth, unrippling surface.

He knows a watched pot never boils, but it's not as though he needs the water anyway. There's nothing to be sterilized. But his hands, clamped under his crossed arms, tremble unsteadily with the need to do something, anything at all; he remembers bouncing on his toes, his surcoat too hot and heavy and his hair sticking to his forehead, trying to see into the pots hanging over the fire before dashing to tell one of the brothers that the water is boiling now.

He shouldn't remember these things. They aren't a part of him anymore, and they haven't been for a long time. He should remember the feeling of killing a man rather than healing him, of marching triumphantly across battlefields, of great men like Old Fritz training his people. He should savor how it will feel once again when he turns the tables on France-because Prussia will, he has to, he'll strip off the complacency of past glories and modernize and show everyone once again just how greatly advanced Prussia is over their pathetic selves.

A fit of coughing drags Prussia out of the hospital in Acre, out of the wars in Europe, and back into his own kitchen. He follows the sound of it, like a golden thread, to the front room where he's set up the cot.

Aside from the coughing, the boy sleeps quietly. His cheeks puff and his lips go round during the fits, but his face doesn't crease with pained lines anymore the way it did in the field. Prussia's found no broken bones, no traces of cuts or bruises, and the boy's body doesn't burn with fever or shiver with chills.

Prussia rubs a rueful hand over his mouth; his tongue feels thick and swollen inside it, still throbbing from the earlier bite. But there's not much to be done about that, either.

The boy's clothes felt stiff and grimy against his skin when he carried the child home, so Prussia's dressed him in a fresh shirt, although the sleeves hide his hands and the collar gapes to show a hint of shoulder. Prussia lays a hand on one of his bare feet, his fingers sliding down to encircle the boy's ankle in a comforting grip. His hair is just starting to lose its sleek fineness and will probably grow in thicker in the coming year; Prussia wonders if it will lose its angel-fair coloring as well, though it isn't quite as fair as Prussia's own.

A restless frown twitches at the corners of Prussia's lips as he studies his face once more. Something about those features, or maybe his clothes-the dark tunic, the cloak, the breeches going threadbare at the knees-or perhaps the picture they made altogether, tugs at the back of Prussia's mind with familiarity, but he can't place why. The boy, he's certain now, isn't one of his citizens.

Still, Prussia supposes he'll put one good meal on those scrawny limbs before he turns the thing out of his house.

He pats the top of the boy's foot and takes a deep breath of the fresher air of the sitting room. He pretends that it helps, that it clears away the memories swirling inside him, the instincts and habits throbbing in his veins. He pretends that he's swimming confidently, right where he wants to be in the river, not drowning in the child he used to be. He walks back to the kitchen and tells himself he doesn't know that half of the heat muddling his mind, his heart, and his stomach can't be blamed on the burning stove.

Prussia opens the door on the front of the stove, grabs a piece of wood from the pile beside it, and tosses it into the fire before stirring the mess with the poker again. He drags a stool over and plops himself down to watch and to wait until the bubbles clinging in a stubborn layer to the bottom of the pot wrench away to the surface of the water, where they can no longer hold their integrity and burst into disappearance as if they never were.

* * *

In the yard behind the house, a hawk standing in the grass makes a quarter-turn before returning to dipping and bobbing its head between its legs and scratching at the earth. At this angle, with its back and tail no longer blocking Prussia's line of sight, he can see-as the hawk curls its head down once more-a shape like a dead leaf, like a wing, flip up for a moment before falling back into the grass. The hawk stretches its head to the side, flinging away a beakful of fluffy down-feathers.

Prussia holds the curtain against the back of two outstretched fingers, entranced, his mouth in an impassive line.

Tucked in bed, the boy coughs twice in his sleep. Prussia ignores him. It would not be quite accurate, perhaps, to describe it as a healthy cough, but it lacks any accents of rasping or rattling, any sound of wetness, any sharp gasps for air. The coughing reminds Prussia every so often that the boy is there, is breathing, and is still alive.

The small bedroom at the back of the house has a musty atmosphere, as if it hasn't been aired out properly in years, which is probably true. When Prussia set the cot in the front room and ministered the boy there yesterday, he thought only of proximity to the kitchen and how he didn't want to traipse up and down the staircase in tending to his charge. But there's nothing that his two hands can do for the boy, he knows, and so he moved him upstairs into a proper bedroom, away from the windows and the view of the street.

France drops by now and again in these recent years without sending word ahead, to ask Prussia how he likes his Empire and to laugh with that wild, unstable look still haunting the lines around his eyes.

The hawk continues to pluck at its kill with an impressively regular rhythm, but Prussia lets the curtain fall shut and turns to eye the boy once more.

He woke from a night of sleeping on the sitting-room sofa-the memory of the spartan beds of the dormitory aching in his bones like a flu called homesickness-and with what freshness that offered, he turned his head to the side and finally recalled just why the image of that boy lingered in his mind.

Prussia stands by the head of the bed with his hand hovering a few inches over the blankets, unsure where to let it come to rest. The more he looks at it the harder it is not to recognize this moon-pale face, though not quite so round as the moon. The baby fat that softened the curves of his features has disappeared, leaving the crisp lines and angles of an older child's face. But he isn't a boy, isn't a child at all. He's the same as Prussia. He's Prussia's neighbor.

"Holy Roman Empire."

His eyes half-open at the sound of his name, a brilliant bright blue that's beginning to wash out with the faintest hint of grey. Prussia leans over, trying to get his face in the boy's line of sight. "Hey, it's okay. You remember me? I'm the German Order."

It takes a moment before his mind repeats what his mouth has uttered, and in a fit of pique Prussia bites down on his already-bitten tongue, his teeth readily fitting into the grooves. He keeps at it until he can taste blood once more. There's no point in trying to correct the mistake-the boy, Holy Roman Empire, has shut his eyes again, and they never focused coherently in the first place.

Prussia relaxes the pressure of his jaws but continues to grind his tongue between his teeth, as if that will fix whatever's wrong with him these past two days. He isn't the Teutonic Order; he stopped identifying with them and converted to a secular Prussia almost three centuries ago, while what remained of them returned to the Holy Roman Empire. Hell, he's even heard a rumor that France's boss disbanded the entire lot of them, so the Order is a ghost twice-over.

Prussia's fingers pinch together and jerk in sharp, precise tugs to straighten the collar of the boy who is probably, in all truth, the Confederation of the Rhine. Perhaps calling himself the German Order is not so ill-fitting a name to give, from one ghost to another.

He turns to keep his vigil at the window, to watch the hawk stripping everything from the bones of some little bird in the grass, to lose himself in the mesmer of the rhythm. Instead Prussia slumps down against the side of the bed and leans his head back on the mattress, although it bends his neck at an awkward angle. Though he ought to bring a chair into the room to set by the head of the bed, he makes no move to get up.

There's no point to boiling water. His hands can do nothing for Holy Roman Empire-whatever ails him is internal and something that no one has managed to fix for centuries. But Prussia's head is lost in a time when their people were countrymen and brothers and his tongue, at least, provided them a measure of relief.

He swallows down the blood and closes his eyes, trying to recapture the sense of a ceiling high above him, of holy voices, of the ascetic chapel and daily prayers. He dredges them up, these memories that seemed to swamp and overflow him unbidden, prayers to God and to Mary slipping through his fingers now that he turns his gaze to them. But then his tongue finds the cadence and Prussia lays back to float, to let the rhythm carry him, and he mumbles in a low, comforting voice over the places where the words have long vanished.


End file.
